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Pot-au-feu Au Bain-marie

A French stew of beef, veal, lamb, hen, and vegetables simmered for six hours in a bain-marie.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pot-au-feu Au Bain-marie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the pot

  1. In a pot, combine the beef, veal, lamb, and hen.

  2. Add the cold water, carrots, turnip, onion with clove, leeks, and celery.

  3. Cover the pot with its lid and seal it with a paste made of flour and water.

Simmer

  1. Place the pot in a larger pot filled with boiling water, ensuring it simmers for 6 hours.

  2. Add boiling water to the outer pot as needed to maintain the boil.

Strain and serve

  1. After 6 hours, remove the paste sealing the pot and strain the broth through a fine sieve.

  2. Serve the broth immediately as a soup or consommé.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  5. Beef + lambtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together896 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef brisket
Releases flavour and gelatin into the broth as it simmers slowly.
Veal shank
Adds body and gelatin, giving the broth a fuller mouthfeel.
Hen
Contributes rich poultry flavour and additional body to the broth.
Leeks
Add mild sweetness and aromatic depth to the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour to the broth.

The step that matters

Keeping the outer pot at a steady simmer. The broth must stay at a gentle, continuous simmer rather than a hard boil. Vigorous boiling makes the broth cloudy and can toughen the meat, so the outer pot needs topping up with boiling water as it reduces.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, lamb, carrot, turnip, onion, leek):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, lamb, carrot, turnip, onion, leek. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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